Bonni Benrubi Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by gallery artistKarine Laval, entitled MISE EN ABYME. In this exhibition, Laval revisits the subject for which she has become best known, the swimming pool. Although continuing to employ a highly saturated palette with tightly composed imagery, this new series marks a departure from her previous work in both tone and depth. Here, Laval takes us through levels of dream-like reflections, painterly layers that oscillate between abstraction and representation. These large-scale tableaux serve not as mere illustrations of the physical experience of the water or the leisure it usually represents, but rather use form, color and texture to depict a world on the edge of the real and surreal.

“I see the pool more as a metaphor, a mirror whose surface reflects the surrounding world but is also a gate into another – dreamlike – world, a sort of mise en abyme.” says Laval. Consequently, the distorted bodies and landscapes begin to echo physical dissolutions and shifting states of mind as the water blurs the threshold between the mundane and the sublime.

This is Laval’s third solo exhibition at Bonni Benrubi Gallery. Her work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, The Sunday Telegraph,Le Figaro Magazine, The New Yorker and many others. Laval’s photographs have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe.
For further information or press inquiries, please contact the Bonni Benrubi Gallery.

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About karinelaval

Karine Laval has been is a French artist living and working in New York. She works primarily with photography and video and shares her time between New York and Europe, alternating magazine and client assignments with an artistic practice, wherein she combines portraiture with images of geographical locations and visual narratives. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York, The New Yorker, Elle, Eyemazing, among others. Her work is exhibited worldwide in galleries and festivals. Laval was selected by Photo District News’ (PDN) 30 Emerging Photographers in 2005. Bonni Benrubi gallery in New York City currently represents her.